New budget

JJ and I have embarked on a new budget. It's not that we necessarily are in the poor house. It's just that we spend way too much money on junk we don't need. We have had a budget, but we used to use it more in terms of keeping track of how we spend our money. This month we bit the bullet and tried a new method. A method we have not tried before. We are working on a cash only system. Here's the plan:

*On the 15th (pay day!) we're going to take a specific amount of cash out of the bank.
*Then we're going to divvy out the cash into our categories. Right now we're working with: groceries, gas, eating out and miscellaneous (start basic right?).
*Then we're going to divide each category's money into weekly allotments.

We have a credit card that we get great rewards on (and pay off monthly -- we've never carried a balance), but we've found that it is way too easy to just swipe the card instead of thinking about the money being spent. I figure if we do this for about three months (and feel in control), we might be able to go back to using the credit card little by little.

We've done this for a week and a half so far and I feel like we've already won some small battles. For example, in the "eating out" category -- probably my personal vice because I'm not the most enthusiastic chef -- in the first week we took my brother out to eat AND had a separate meal out on our small weekly budget. We had to sacrifice a bit -- going to Arby's and using the 5 for $5 deal, but it felt ... it felt so good to stay in budget! It's like my personal game (have I mentioned I'm a BIT competitive ever? No? It could be a separate post. Believe me.) -- I WANT to have money left in that darn envelope.

JJ is a bit embarrassed -- how can we so "easily" keep to our budget when we've been way off -- up to double off -- before?